Anonymous takes on Westboro Baptist Church

"Following the Sandy Hook shooting tragedy, the Westboro Baptist Church is unsurprisingly stirring up controversy by doing one of the things they do best: being $#@!s and picketing funerals. Your friendly, faceless, neighborhood hacking group Anonymous has responded by doing what they do best: publishing private information, in this case, about the members of the Westboro Baptist Church.

Anonymous has now published a list of Westboro Baptist Church members along with plenty of personal information such as home addresses, emails, and phone numbers. On the more legal end of the activism spectrum, the group is also pushing a petition to legally recognize the Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group. And what do you know, it's already gotten the required number of signatures."http://m.gizmodo.com/5968886/anonymo...uneral-protest

"Members of the hacktivist group Anonymous have targeted the Westboro Baptist Church after the hate-mongering, quasi-religious group announced plans to protest a Sunday night vigil in remembrance of the Sandy Hook shooting victims, 20 of whom were just 6 and 7 years old.
On Saturday, Westboro Baptist Church spokesperson Shirley Phelps-Roper tweeted that the group would be protesting the vigil in Newtown, Conn., to "sing praise to God for the glory of his work in executing his judgment."
Anonymous apparently vowed retaliation as part of #OpWestBor in a video posted to Vimeo under the handle KY Anonymous. "We will not allow you to corrupt the minds of America with your seeds of hatred," says the voice-over in the video. "We will not allow you to inspire aggression to the social factions which you deem inferior. We will render you obsolete. We will destroy you. We are coming."
On Sunday, Anonymous posted to Pastebin a list of data that it claimed belonged to Westboro members. The data included names, street addresses, phone numbers and email addresses, according to CNET." From the Huffington post

"Over the weekend, Anonymous was stirred to action against an old nemesis: the Westboro Baptist Church. The most recent feud came in the wake of WBCís appalling reaction to the Sandy Hook shooting Friday in Newtown, CT. Anonymousís offensive increased in intensity as WBC announced plans to picket a vigil for the elementary schoolís victims. The hacker collective has since managed to hijack a high-profile Twitter account as well as take down WBCís site, among other claimed victories.

Anonymous, like much of the world, has a deep-seated hatred for the wildly intolerant WBC. Upon discovering WBCís unsympathetic reaction to the shooting, Anonymous began by doxing some of the churchís members that it could find on Twitter. It also encouraged followers to sign a whitehouse.gov petition recognizing WBC as a hate group.

Today, Anonymous scored several more successes: godhatesfags.com, the website of WBC, went down,*possibly as a result of DDoS attacks by anonymous members. Other high-profile hackers have joined in, such as @cosmothegod, who hijacked the personal Twitter account of WBC spokesperson Shirley Phelps-Roper and retweeted several posts about his victory. Anonymousís official Twitter account also claims that its members managed to change Phelps-Roperís desktop background to gay porn, uncovered alleged social security numbers of key WBC members through the*doxing process, and successfully filed for a death certificate for Phelps-Roper. The group has since tweeted out the alleged hotel where WBC members were staying and offered an IRC channel specifically to talk about its #OpWBC movement.

For a brief time, it seemed as though WBC and Anonymous might come to blows at the vigil. A hashtag, #occupynewtown, suggested that if WBC showed up to the vigil, Anonymous members and supporters should form a human wall separating the WBC picketers from the families mourning the losses. Fortunately for all involved, it appears the picket didnít come to pass. No official word on whether the classic pizza-ordering tactic happened either." http://arstechnica.com/security/2012...aptist-church/

I think it's great that they're attacking the WBC where it's going to hurt them & make them think twice before they assert their "beliefs". Legally the WBC isn't doing anything wrong, so if any of the members working with Anyonymous' agenda of applying its own "social justice" I wonder how the Court System will handle it (I think we can all agree that the jury would find it VERY difficult to not emotionally side with Anonymous).

I think it's great that they're attacking the WBC where it's going to hurt them & make them think twice before they assert their "beliefs". Legally the WBC isn't doing anything wrong, so if any of the members working with Anyonymous' agenda of applying its own "social justice" I wonder how the Court System will handle it (I think we can all agree that the jury would find it VERY difficult to not emotionally side with Anonymous).

Something tells me that even if the jury convicted them, the judge would probably take some rather extreme leniency in sentencing. But it would never get to that part, as past precedent would show that local authorities usually overlook illegal (within reason) action against WBC to prevent their protesting. Police would probably "lose" just about every shred of evidence they could, and the prosecutors would prob not be far behind.

DefactoM6 makes a interesting point about the local authorities overlooking the Anonymous invasion of WBC simply to subdue their craziness... If the police turn their head, i will regain faith in humanity lol

I honestly have no idea. NOTHING they do makes any sense to me. I can't even begin to understand how someone gets THAT $#@!ed up.

I'll be honest, if it wasn't for what it would further put the parents through, i almost wish they would picket one of the funerals or the school. That would certainly be the end of the WBC, there wouldn't be enough law enforcement in the state to stop people from tearing those $#@!ers apart.